More on Optimal Questionnaire Design for Surveys and Experiments

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Workshop for researchers interested in the creation of surveys

People setting out to conduct questionnaire-based research (surveys, laboratory experiments,
and other types of studies) often assume that the process of designing a questionnaire
is simple and intuitive, and that reusing items from questionnaires that have been
used in past research is a wise way to efficiently design a new questionnaire. In
this workshop, Dr. Krosnick will continue the presentation he began at SJSU demonstrating
how much more challenging questionnaire design is than many people assume and how
easy it is to do well if guided by the right empirically-grounded principles for producing
reliable and valid data. Implementing this guidance will help researchers collect
valid and reliable data more quickly, efficiently, and inexpensively and will maximize
their chances of detecting true relations between variables and producing accurate
characterizations of populations. He will continue to summarize guidance from 100-years-worth
of studies on optimizing questionnaire design.

About Dr. Jon A. Krosnick

Winner of the American Association for Public Opinion Research's Lifetime Achievement
Award for outstanding research, Jon A. Krosnick is Frederic O. Glover Professor in
Humanities and Social Sciences, Professor of Communication, Professor of Political
Science, and (by courtesy) Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, director
of the Political Psychology Research Group at Stanford, and director of the Summer
Institute in Political Psychology at Stanford, as well as Research Psychologist at
the U.S. Census Bureau.

Dr. Krosnick is also a world-recognized expert on the psychology of attitudes, especially
in the area of politics. He is co-principal investigator of the American National
Election Study, the nation's preeminent academic research project exploring voter
decision-making and political campaign effects. For 30 years, Dr. Krosnick has studied
how the American public's political attitudes are formed, change, and shape thinking
and action. His publications explore the causes of people decisions about whether
to vote, for whom to vote, whether to approve of the President's performance, whether
to take action to influence government policy-making on a specific issue, and much
more.

Another major focus of his research has been on questionnaire design and survey research
methods. Professor Krosnick has taught courses for professionals on survey methods
for 30 years around the world and has served as a methodology consultant to government
agencies, commercial firms, and academic scholars. His books include "Introduction
to Survey Research, Polling, and Data Analysis" and "The Handbook of Questionnaire
Design" (forthcoming, Oxford University Press), which reviews 100 years of research
on how different ways of asking questions can yield different answers from survey
respondents and on how to design questions to measure most accurately. His recent
research has focused on how other aspects of survey methodology (e.g., collecting
data by interviewing face-to-face vs. by telephone or on paper questionnaires) can
be optimized to maximize accuracy.

In addition to the AAPOR Award, Dr. Krosnick's scholarship has been recognized with
the Phillip Brickman Memorial Prize, the Pi Sigma Alpha Award, the Erik Erikson Early
Career Award for Excellence and Creativity, two fellowships at the Center for Advanced
Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and election as a fellow of the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

As an expert witness in court, he has testified evaluating the quality of surveys
presented as evidence by opposing counsel and has conducted original survey research
to inform courts in cases involving unreimbursed expenses, uncompensated overtime
work, exempt/non-exempt misclassification, patent/trademark violation, health effects
of accidents, consequences of being misinformed about the results of standardized
academic tests, economic valuation of environmental damage, change of venue motions,
and other topics.

Dr. Krosnick's Political Psychology Research Group (PPRG) is a cross-disciplinary
team of scholars who conduct empirical studies of the psychology of political behavior
and studies seeking to optimize research methodology for studying political psychology.
The group's studies employ a wide range of research methods, including surveys, experiments,
and content analysis, and the group often conducts collaborative research studies
with leading news media organizations, including ABC News, The Associated Press, the
Washington Post, and Time Magazine. Support for the group's work has come from U.S.
Government agencies (e.g., the National Science Foundation, the Bureau of Labor Statistics),
private foundations (e.g., the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Robert Wood
Johnson Foundation), and Institutes at Stanford (e.g., the Woods Institute for the
Environment). Dr. Krosnick also directs the Summer Institute in Political Psychology,
an annual event that brings 60 students and professionals from around the world to
Stanford for intensive training in political psychology theory and methods.